NP View: Trudeau's SNC-Lavalin coverups are more disturbing than the alleged crimes
It's a truism that it's not the crime but the coverup that typically does a government in. Maybe. But if this is a coverup, it is almost criminally incompetent

National Post View
February 15, 2019
7:12 PM EST

More than a full week after the SNC-Lavalin scandal erupted all over the Trudeau government, what’s most astonishing is how the federal Liberals haven’t even been able to yet settle on a coherent cover story — a “narrative,” as the political jargon would call it. The alleged acts are bad enough: pressuring former justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to quietly nudge prosecutors toward giving Quebec-based, Liberal-friendly SNC-Lavalin a break in an ongoing criminal prosecution for corruption charges, and then demoting her into a lesser portfolio when she refused. The manifest incompetence of the government’s response to the growing controversy is somehow more disturbing.

Let’s start with the whisper campaign that immediately began against Wilson-Raybould. A bevy of anonymous Liberal insiders have been spreading the word to any journalist who’ll listen that she was just a pain to work with. It was all about “Jody,” not about the government. She was difficult. Not a team player. The whispers, no doubt co-ordinated by the Prime Minister’s Office in a hamfisted attempt to control a disastrous story, resulted in a remarkable statement of support for Wilson-Raybould from another member of Trudeau’s cabinet this week: Jane Philpott, former minister of health and Indigenous services and now head of the Treasury Board. Her comments weren’t about the substance of the scandal per se; she tweeted a photo of her and Wilson-Raybould smiling, thanked her for having “taught me so much” and said she was “proud of the laws we worked on together” and that she knows “you will continue to serve Canadians.” But they were clearly an expression of support for Wilson-Raybould and, by clearly praising her work and public service, a vigorous rebuke to the stories being planted about Wilson-Raybould’s supposed selfishness.

Once the slagging of Wilson-Raybould had brought enough widespread criticism over their clearly sexist and probably racist tone (attacking a strong, highly accomplished female Aboriginal for being too full of herself — how classy), the prime minister finally condemned them. “There have been many comments published in the media in various reports, about the former attorney general, about Jody Wilson-Raybould, that are absolutely unacceptable,” he said on Friday. “The sexist comments, the racist comments that have been made by anonymous sources are unacceptable and I condemn them in the strongest possible terms. That is not what we need to be engaged in, in public discourse in Canada.”

It was an appropriate response. But how odd that it took a full six days after Liberal insiders had planted the slanderous stories for our supposedly feminist and progressive prime minister to finally say that.

This was far from the only misstep the prime minister had this week. On Monday, under questioning from reporters, Trudeau assured Canadians that the matter was overblown. The fact that Wilson-Raybould continued to serve in cabinet during the controversy, he said, showed that the public was overreacting, and that Wilson-Raybould was comfortable continuing to serve in his government.

Whoops.

She quit hours later, leaving Trudeau to gamely suggest the next day that he was disappointed she hadn’t spoken up if she’d felt uncomfortable. Ah, at least he made sure to keep blaming her and her alone.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to reporters during a visit to Sudbury, Ont. on Feb. 13, 2019. John Lappa/Sudbury Star/Postmedia Network
Things did not improve for the Liberals as the week went on. The opposition tried to force a meaningful investigation through the Commons justice committee, but were effectively stonewalled by the Liberal majority, who declined to invite the key players to testify — most notably Wilson-Raybould herself and the prime minister’s principal secretary, Gerald Butts, who had privately discussed the SNC-Lavalin case with Wilson-Raybould. The committee may later elect to call either or both of those individuals, but only after closed-door meetings and only if at least one Liberal breaks with the majority to vote with the opposition. Canadians will learn as much about this federal Liberal scandal, in other words, as the federal Liberals choose. Chalk up another win for Canada’s Most Transparent Government Ever.

The disgraces didn’t stop there. Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, chair of the justice committee, gave a series of interviews where he suggested, apparently without having given the notion the slightest thought, that Wilson-Raybould was bounced from justice because she doesn’t speak French. That was a curious message to send the thousands of francophone Canadians who have honourably served in our country’s armed forces — including in our traditionally French-speaking units — by suggesting that Veterans Affairs is a portfolio suitable for dumping ministers whose French doesn’t quite pass muster. Housefather quickly retreated, saying his comments were speculation and he apologized for them. But then the prime minister later suggested that Wilson-Raybould wouldn’t have been moved if Scott Brison hadn’t recently resigned from politics, requiring a cabinet shuffle. While it’s true that Brison’s departure made a shuffle necessary, it was not necessary to specifically shuffle Wilson-Raybould; Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Environment Minister Catherine McKenna somehow managed to hang on to their jobs. (Amusingly, shortly after the prime minister’s comment, Brison’s husband tweeted, “It’s ok, I usually blame my husband for everything too.”)

It’s become a truism in politics that it’s not the crime but the coverup that typically does a government in. Maybe so. But if this is a coverup, it is almost criminally incompetent. The alleged offence is bad enough. The aftermath is embarrassing.

Essentially Canadian company SNC Lavalin is accused of corruption. The then attorney general wasn't interested in a deal, and someone from Truedeau's government didn't like that, and she got shuffled in a different position. The question is who knew. Does that include Truedeau himself.

But people.... Canada has rule of law. I mean that's they keep on telling China when they kidnapped a Chinese citizen in a blatantly politically motivated case. Its just a shame Chinese news is very reserved in presentation, so they reported this in less sensational manner. They need to take a leaf out of RT's book and have the host burst into laughter, ala Peter Lavelle.

Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

Yeah, Trudeau's liberals have been a hot fucking mess. I'm not going to be sad to see them lose this year's election even if it means another round of the conservatives taking over. If the NDP had a leader who could rally any support I'd vote for them, but as it stands I have no idea who I'll be voting for this coming election.

If the roles were reversed, the Conservatives would have done the exact same thing, except perhaps they would have been a bit better at sweeping it under the rug. And the NDP would have done the exact same thing, albeit less competently.

Politics as usual, really. We're just as corrupt as everywhere else no matter how much Trudeau likes to pretend otherwise.

This is a concerning story, especially as it provides an opening for Alt. Reich strongman-type rhetoric to take route in Canada by attacking a corrupt "establishment", as we saw with Trump vs. Hillary in 2016. And with the OP right now, who immediately uses this case for Whataboutism to defend the espionage of an authoritarian regime (one frankly gets the feeling that this defence of China, not the scandal itself, was the main reason for posting this story). Because as we know, if one side does something bad, that means the other side is completely innocent victims who can do no wrong. The world is simple that way.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zxT8CM8XntA

And with the OP right now, who immediately uses this case for Whataboutism to defend the espionage of an authoritarian regime (one frankly gets the feeling that this defence of China, not the scandal itself, was the main reason for posting this story). Because as we know, if one side does something bad, that means the other side is completely innocent victims who can do no wrong. The world is simple that way.

Now, now, that's not what happened. For one thing, Meng is accused of many things, but espionage isn't one of them, so that's irrelevant. You can imagine my surprise after hearing from you and Canada's politicians about "rule of law," and then finding out these guys have been giving the middle finger to the rule of law since 2015. Imagine my shock when Canadians here on this board proclaim that its nothing new. But... Canadians don't lie. And Trudeau seemed like such a nice guy too.

You know who else mention the China case and how this makes Canada look bad when they tell China they have "rule of law." Canada's own media. I guess according to you, they must have done it to "defend China," too right? But even if they did, so fucking what? Your argument is an appeal to motive and can be dismissed as the fallacious argument that it is. The fact remains, Canada can talk about its "rule of law," all it likes but its shown to selectively applied at best, utter bullshit at worse.

Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

It is practically a Canadian tradition for the ruling federal government to be involved in some form of scandal. This is nothing new.

No kidding. Chretien had that nice helicopter contract scandal along with funnelling something like a billion bucks into his own riding, Harper & Mulroney had more shit than I can remember, and if I remember my high school history classes correctly Trudeau the elder wasn't exactly clean either. We like to pretend Canada is clean & wholesome, but it's politics, it's always dirty to some degree. It's normal. You might not like it, but that's the way it is.

aerius: I'll vote for you if you sleep with me. Lusankya: Deal!
Say, do you want it to be a threesome with your wife? Or a foursome with your wife and sister-in-law? I'm up for either.

It is practically a Canadian tradition for the ruling federal government to be involved in some form of scandal. This is nothing new.

No kidding. Chretien had that nice helicopter contract scandal along with funnelling something like a billion bucks into his own riding, Harper & Mulroney had more shit than I can remember, and if I remember my high school history classes correctly Trudeau the elder wasn't exactly clean either. We like to pretend Canada is clean & wholesome, but it's politics, it's always dirty to some degree. It's normal. You might not like it, but that's the way it is.

Indeed. Australia likes to pretend it's a happy go lucky beach country, but it's pretty ugly. Then again, if the voters dislike it enough, they can always vote the relevant people out.

I'm unsure as to how it would work in China. Who would remove Xi?

"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist

"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin

outhern Trillium Line extension including airport link due to be completed by 2021

SNC-Lavalin is the City of Ottawa's top choice to build the $600-million Trillium Line extension during the second phase of Ottawa's light rail project, CBC News has learned.
The Montreal-based company, currently embroiled in political controversy, is one of three pre-qualified bidders for the southern extension, which would add 16 kilometres and eight new stations, including a spur to the Ottawa International Airport, by 2021.

According to multiple sources with knowledge of the issue, SNC-Lavalin has emerged from a competitive bidding process against two international consortia as the city's preferred proponent. A technical briefing on the awarding of the contract is expected at City Hall next week, and council must approve the choice at a meeting on Feb. 27.

The company is already a leading partner in Rideau Transit Group (RTG), which is constructing the east-west Confederation Line — a project that appears to be running at least a year late. And, as part of RTG, will also be responsible for maintaining the system, worth more than $2 billion over the contract's 30 years.
Under the rules for Stage 2 bidding, none of the major partners in RTG were allowed to bid for the Confederation Line extension, as they were thought to have an unfair advantage.
RTG players were allowed to bid for the north-south Trillium Line project, however. Only SNC-Lavalin did so, under the name TransitNEXT.
The company declined comment for this story.
Choice likely to raise eyebrows

The choice of SNC-Lavalin is sure to raise eyebrows.
The company is at the forefront of a political furor that involves, among other headline-grabbing elements, whether it would have to face criminal charges of fraud and corruption in connection with payments of almost $48 million to Libyan officials, and allegations it defrauded Libyan organizations of an estimated $130 million.
If found guilty, SNC-Lavalin could be blocked from bidding on federal government contracts for a decade. Instead, the company asked for the public prosecutor to enter into negotiations toward a remediation agreement. SNC-Lavalin has even filed for a judicial review of the public prosecutor's decision not to meet with the company.
As well, several former SNC-Lavalin executives have pleaded guilty in a corruption case involving the $1.3-billion contract to build Montreal's McGill University Health Centre.
And just this week, reports confirmed that the RCMP are investigating whether high-level officials at SNC-Lavalin were aware of kickback payments made in relation to Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge.

'No difficulty' with SNC-Lavalin, mayor says
Asked earlier this week about the beleaguered company's involvement in the $2.1-billion Confederation Line project, and possible contention for the Trillium Line contract, Mayor Jim Watson said he had no concerns."We have had no difficulty, obviously, with them from an ethics point of view here in Ottawa," Watson said.
Watson said staff had assured him that SNC-Lavalin's potential involvement in LRT's next stage would put neither the city nor local taxpayers at risk.
Mounting financial pressures

Apart from ethical considerations, the choice of SNC-Lavalin for the Trillium Line project should prompt questions about the company's financial future.
Since it's been facing criminal prosecution, SNC-Lavalin share prices have plummeted. Its chief executive said late last year the simmering scandal has cost the company $5-billion worth of business.
Just this week, debt-rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded SNC-Lavalin, which has significantly slashed its own earnings projections twice recently.

The fallout from the SNC-Lavalin affair is only beginning to rain down on Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government but it seems to be having an impact — one that could put the Liberals on track to defeat in this fall's federal election.

The controversy surrounding allegations about political interference in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a major Quebec-based engineering firm, and the subsequent demotion and resignation from cabinet of former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould (followed by the resignation of the prime minister's principal secretary, Gerry Butts), is evolving on a daily basis.

Wilson-Raybould tells Commons she wants to 'speak my truth' on SNC-Lavalin, tells Liberals she's still on-side
Poll Tracker: Liberals take hit in wake of SNC-Lavalin affair
The first polls published since the Globe and Mail initially reported the allegations on Feb. 7 suggest that the Liberals have taken a significant hit in public support.

The CBC's Poll Tracker, an aggregation of all publicly available polls, puts the Liberals and Conservatives neck-and-neck in voting intentions and virtually tied in the number of seats each party would be likely to win if an election were held today.

Right now, there's no clear indication of which party would emerge with the most seats in a general election — a significant shift from where things stood at the end of 2018, when the Poll Tracker gave the Liberals a better than 90 per cent chance of winning an election.

For the Liberals, the trend line might only get worse.

Three polls that were conducted entirely after the initial Globe reports emerged have been published in recent days — from Campaign Research (Feb. 7-11), Ipsos/Global News (Feb. 14-18) and Léger/Canadian Press (Feb. 15-19). The last two surveys were conducted after Wilson-Raybould's resignation from cabinet and include some data gathered since Butts stepped down on Monday.

Campaign Research showed the Conservatives ahead with 37 per cent to 32 per cent for the Liberals, while both Ipsos and Léger put the margin at 36 to 34 per cent in the Conservatives' favour. Since December, when both polling firms were last in the field, the Liberals have lost one point in Campaign Research's polling and four percentage points in the Ipsos poll, while the party is down five points since November in the Léger poll.

The Conservatives have gained two to three points over that time.

The only shift that appears statistically significant is the five-point Liberal slide recorded by Léger — but the fact that all three polling firms are picking up similar trends suggests that the swing between the Conservatives and Liberals is real.

SNC-Lavalin wearing on Trudeau

Campaign Research also picked up a drop of four points in Trudeau's own approval rating (to 35 per cent), while Ipsos found the number of respondents saying the Liberals deserve to be re-elected has plummeted eight points since December to 38 per cent.

Léger reports satisfaction with the government is down nine points and Trudeau's own score on Canadians' preference for prime minister is down seven points to 26 per cent. That this drop did not result in any sizeable gain for any of his opponents suggests it's more about Trudeau himself than it is about the performance of any other party leader.

The Léger/Canadian Press poll provides some indications of the impact of the SNC-Lavalin affair in particular. The poll finds that Canadians are paying attention, with 67 per cent reporting some awareness of the story.

Of those with some knowledge of the controversy, 41 per cent agreed with this statement: "Yes, the prime minister did something wrong." Only 12 per cent said that the prime minister "did not do anything wrong."

Another 41 per cent said that they were "not sure either way," suggesting that many Canadians are still waiting to learn more before coming down on one side or the other. That might be the silver lining here for the Liberals: most Canadians polled either believe the prime minister or are still giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But it also means that if the story generates more negative headlines for the government (and there are few indications so far that it won't), there aren't very many Canadians predisposed to believe the Liberals' side of the story.

Liberals hurting in Quebec, but mostly Ontario

While the impact of the affair has sapped the Liberals in every part of the country, there is a difference between what the polls are saying in the two largest provinces that inevitably will decide the next federal election.

Across the three surveys, the Conservatives made gains in both Ontario and Quebec while the Liberals lost support. (The NDP also is down consistently in Quebec and the Bloc Québécois up, but that was a pre-existing trend that probably has little to do with the SNC-Lavalin affair.)

The swing was more pronounced in Ontario than it was in Quebec, where concerns about the impact of the affair on SNC-Lavalin's future have been more prevalent. The Conservatives gained between three and six points in Ontario in the three surveys, averaging a gain of just under five points. The Liberals lost between three and seven points, for an average loss of just over five points.

Both Ipsos and Léger recorded slides for the Liberals in Ontario sizeable enough to be statistically significant.

Andrew Scheer's Conservative Party has made gains in the polls in Quebec and particularly in Ontario in recent weeks. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
In Quebec, however, the Conservative gain was only three to four points, with the Liberals dropping two to four — all within what would be the margin of error for probabilistic samples of the sizes surveyed in the province.

The trend is pointing in one direction, which is notable. But so far, the impact in Quebec seems less pronounced. Both Léger and Ipsos still give the Liberals a double-digit lead in Quebec, while the race is now either tied or leaning Conservative in Ontario.

That could have some important electoral implications if the trends hold. As it stands now, the Liberals are still projected to gain seats in Quebec — perhaps about a dozen — but are also on track to lose as many as 30 in Ontario. Even if the Liberal slide in support halts, that alone would make it nearly impossible for Trudeau to secure another majority government in the fall.

Of course, October's federal election is a long way off. The SNC-Lavalin story and the polling trends might change (and change again, and again) between now and then. But based on where the story and the trends are heading now, the Liberals have to hope for a swing back in their direction.

Liberals are getting pounded in the polls, going from a more than 90% chance of victory to neck and neck with the Cons. Worst of all seems to be Ontario, which between this and Doug Ford seems to have been thoroughly lost to the far Right for the foreseeable future.

I don't mean to diminish the seriousness of this scandal, though I will note that Trudeau has not been found guilty of any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, possible corruption should not go ignored. But the shear short-sighted, knee-jerk reactionary nature of this shift towards the Cons frankly sickens me. Is punishing a possible corrupt coverup by Trudeau worth inviting the horror that's been going on in the US for the last two years to take over Canada? Is that really the lesser evil, especially considering that Canada arguably doesn't have nearly as strong a system of checks and balances on a PM (if they have a majority) that the US does on Presidential power? Maybe it seems like the lesser evil if you're a straight white man, and (mistakenly) feel that you have nothing to fear from a far Right government.

I mean, its not even as much of a two party system as in the US. You COULD vote NDP or even Green or the Bloc if you really want to stick it to Trudeau (though the NDP has never actually won control of the government, so its arguable how effective such an approach would be vs. simply splitting the vote against the Cons).

No doubt many will disagree with me, but I'll take routine political corruption over Neo-Fascism any day of the week- because at least I am pretty sure that Trudeau isn't seeking to become dictator, and that he doesn't seek the death or subjugation of everyone different from himself. I just can't bring myself to care that much about whether he leaned on some prosecutors compared to "Are we going to have a dictatorship that panders to white nationalists and rapists?"

And if you think its unfair to paint the Canadian Cons with the same brush as Trumpism, just look at Doug Ford:

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario won a majority government on June 7, taking power for the first time in 15 years. The election was a resounding victory for leader Doug Ford. Accordingly, it was also a victory for white supremacists.

This is because Ford was the preferred candidate for the far-right. Don't believe me? Just listen to them.

Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford attends his election night party in Toronto following the provincial...
CARLO ALLEGRI / REUTERS
Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford attends his election night party in Toronto following the provincial election on June 7, 2018.
A recent investigation from Ricochet found that, "Far-right figures and groups, from the explicitly white supremacist to the more crypto-fascist, have not been shy in proclaiming their support for 'Ford Nation' and their belief that Doug Ford could create an opening for white supremacist activity similar to the effect of Donald Trump in the United States."

Ricochet's investigation involved listening to episodes of This Hour Has 88 Minutes, the most popular white supremacist podcast in Canada until it was deleted on May 9, after Vice Canada sent a comment request to one of the co-hosts, Thomas White, for an investigation that would be released a week later.

The far-right figures on the podcast did not give their support to Ford begrudgingly, in the way some people do when voting for the candidate they believe will cause the least harm.

Instead, over the course of several episodes, the co-hosts encouraged listeners to buy PC memberships to vote for Ford in the leadership race, vote for Ford to be premier, and actively support his campaign on the ground and through social media.

This is not to say that Ford is a white supremacist. Ford denounced Gabriel Sohier Chaput, a co-host of This Hour Has 88 Minutes'.

Ford also appears to have received significant support from racialized voters, especially in the Greater Toronto Area, and has many racialized people in his caucus.

According to Ricochet's analysis of the podcast, the white supremacists supported Ford because they believed he will "'electrify' the white working class and give blue-collar people permission to be racist," as well as hastening an arrival of the white ethnostate they desire.

Alt-right group, the Proud Boys, are calling Ford the 'Proud Boy of the month'
Ford also received support from several other far-right figures.

Ezra Levant, the co-founder of the news and commentary outlet, Rebel Media, which has hosted white nationalists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, alt-right figures and other hate-mongers, says Ford will smash the "false liberal consensus."

Faith Goldy, the former Rebel Media host who was fired after appearing on a podcast affiliated with a neo-Nazi publication, The Daily Stormer, describes Ford as a "right wing populist," that will "clean house."

Alt-right group, the Proud Boys, are calling Ford the "Proud Boy of the month," and claiming that he will, "Make Ontario Great Again."

Doug Ford’s Victory Is Also One For White
VIA PROUD BOYS CANADA ON FACEBOOK
Yet the far-right's affection for Ford isn't entirely unrequited, either. Ford was a speaker at a Rebel Media event in June 2017. He also appointed Andrew Lawton, one of Rebel Media's former hosts, who once claimed that women in Germany deserved to be raped because of the country's supposedly lax refugee policies.

One of Ford's former candidates, Tanya Granic Allen, who has espoused an Islamophobic and homophobic ideology that led to her being dismissed as a candidate, was endorsed by prominent neo-Nazi, Paul Fromm.

Another one of Ford's candidates, Donna Skelly, promoted a far-right news organization during an event for young conservatives in December 2017.

Ontario already has a hate problem
In May, when speaking on immigration, Ford claimed that Ontario needs to "take care of our own." The comment was widely condemned, but according to far-right organizer Cameron, who celebrated the remark, "Every nationalist out there are [sic] like 'we know what you're sayin' Dougie.'"

One of the co-hosts of This Hour Has 88 Minutes also claimed Ford has sent covert signals of approval to the far-right, stating, "All it takes is someone like a Doug Ford or a Trump to activate those impulses in people."

These racist impulses aren't entirely dormant, of course.

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposed or supported a great deal of anti-Muslim legislation, ostensibly in the name of national security, especially in his final few years. This included: banning niqabs in citizenship ceremonies, introducing Bill C-51, planning to combat "barbaric cultural practices," and citing mosques as sites of radicalization in Canada. In that same time span, from 2012 to 2015, hate crimes against Muslims reported by police to Statistics Canada increased by 253 per cent.

Ontario already has a hate problem. There were 612 hate crimes reported by police to Statistics Canada in 2016, 43 per cent of the total reported in Canada as a whole. Also in 2016, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants and advocacy group Mass Minority released a study which found there was an "epidemic of Islamophobia" in the province.

The threat now facing marginalized people in Ontario is that Ford's alleged dog whistles and connections to the far-right will further embolden white supremacists and normalize hatred.

Doug Ford’s Victory Is Also One For White
VIA RONNY CAMERON ON FACEBOOK
Better organization will mean more recruits, and violence, all the way to mass casualty attacks, as several experts studying the far-right told The Walrus.

More from HuffPost Canada:

Ontario Election 2018: Province Expected To See Seismic Shift In Government After 15 Years
How Did Doug Ford Get Here? It Didn't Happen Overnight
Doug Ford Defends Treatment Of Brother's Widow Amid Bitter Family Feud
White supremacists are confident in their ability to expand their ranks in this political climate. One of the This Hour Has 88 Minutes co-hosts claimed that, "Those people [blue-collar workers] are not far from our thinking. It's a very small push to our thinking."

A Ford victory is the push they've been hoping to get. It's up to Ontarians to prove them wrong.

The Proud Boys, FYI, are the same violent neo-fascist group I posted on in the Mueller thread, due to their ties to Colluder and terrorist threat-poster Roger Stone.

(And while I have no proof, given that he's an Alt. Reich-ish politician with Mob ties, and IIRC Mob ties in the East usually means Russian Mob, I'd be downright shocked if Doug Ford isn't already, or soon will be, a Russian asset).

And for the Federal Cons... Stephen Harper's "Barbaric Cultural Practices" law and Burkha Ban. That is all.

So you know what? Unless they show that Trudeau was involved in raping or murdering someone or something, I'm standing by him. Because even if he's corrupt, he's not a fucking fascist or bigot. And because I have friends who are women and minorities, and I rate their dignity and security higher than I do punishing Trudeau over this.

Edits: Not that my vote is likely to mean a damn thing here, more's the pity, because my riding is pretty much guaranteed to go either NDP or just possibly Green, as always. So I'll probably vote for whichever of those two options most loudly and unequivocally denounces the radical Right. But I am rooting for the Liberals at the national level.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zxT8CM8XntA

Or if it seriously looks like the Liberals will lose the election with Trudeau as leader he should resign and/or be removed and replaced. There is still enough time to do this, and if necessary the election could be postponed to 2020 as constitutionally we only require an election every 5 years, not 4.

It's not like that's without precedent either; that's exactly what the PC Party did in Ontario after the Patrick Brown scandal with only ~6 months to go before an election, and they still went on to win. And speaking of which, the failure of the Ontario Liberals to recognise the need to replace their leadership despite consistently polling only ~12-18% support a full year before the election was certainly a factor in their crushing defeat. At least Dalton Mcguinty knew when to quit. Hell, I bet even Trump would question his chances of winning with polls that low, and that's including him using election rigging, voter suppression and help from Russia.

It's not like that's without precedent either; that's exactly what the PC Party did in Ontario after the Patrick Brown scandal with only ~6 months to go before an election, and they still went on to win. And speaking of which, the failure of the Ontario Liberals to recognise the need to replace their leadership despite consistently polling only ~15-20% support a full year before the election was certainly a factor in their crushing defeat. Even Dalton Mcguinty new when to quit. Hell, Trump would likely take notice of polls that bad.

Oh god, don't even get me started on that one. Hi, my name is Kathleen Wynne, I'm polling at 15% but I'll run for election anyway and then try to resign with one week left in the elections. What in the fucking fuck was that? Are you fucking serious? You could pull some hobo off the street and he'd probably win against Wynne, but they ran her anyway, makes me want to fucking punch people in the balls.

aerius: I'll vote for you if you sleep with me. Lusankya: Deal!
Say, do you want it to be a threesome with your wife? Or a foursome with your wife and sister-in-law? I'm up for either.

Or if it seriously looks like the Liberals will lose the election with Trudeau as leader he should resign and/or be removed and replaced. There is still enough time to do this, and if necessary the election could be postponed to 2020 as constitutionally we only require an election every 5 years, not 4.

It's not like that's without precedent either; that's exactly what the PC Party did in Ontario after the Patrick Brown scandal with only ~6 months to go before an election, and they still went on to win. And speaking of which, the failure of the Ontario Liberals to recognise the need to replace their leadership despite consistently polling only ~12-18% support a full year before the election was certainly a factor in their crushing defeat. At least Dalton Mcguinty knew when to quit. Hell, I bet even Trump would question his chances of winning with polls that low, and that's including him using election rigging, voter suppression and help from Russia.

If his numbers continue to slip, yes, I think Trudeau should absolutely do the decent thing for his party and country and fall on his metaphorical sword. But if its a choice between him and Republican-lite, I know which side I'm on.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zxT8CM8XntA

Or if it seriously looks like the Liberals will lose the election with Trudeau as leader he should resign and/or be removed and replaced. There is still enough time to do this, and if necessary the election could be postponed to 2020 as constitutionally we only require an election every 5 years, not 4.

It's not like that's without precedent either; that's exactly what the PC Party did in Ontario after the Patrick Brown scandal with only ~6 months to go before an election, and they still went on to win. And speaking of which, the failure of the Ontario Liberals to recognise the need to replace their leadership despite consistently polling only ~12-18% support a full year before the election was certainly a factor in their crushing defeat. At least Dalton Mcguinty knew when to quit. Hell, I bet even Trump would question his chances of winning with polls that low, and that's including him using election rigging, voter suppression and help from Russia.

If his numbers continue to slip, yes, I think Trudeau should absolutely do the decent thing for his party and country and fall on his metaphorical sword. But if its a choice between him and Republican-lite, I know which side I'm on.

Before the ex-Justice Minister testified I didn't think it would come to that. After today I think the prospect of Leader of the Federal Liberal Party and Prime Minster Chrytia Freeland happening this year just got a lot more likely. Trudeau himself doesn't appear to have done much wrong, but the five or so guys who have been trying to run the entire government out of the PMO appear to be screwing the pooch badly and ultimately they are his responsibility.

Quite. And, more to the point, pragmatism dictates that Trudeau step down rather than dragging the whole party down with the sinking ship.

IIRC, a recent poll showed that if the election were held today, the Cons would win.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zxT8CM8XntA

Now, I know this is probably just opportunism from someone who wants to Make Canada Great Again. But I also can't help but compare to the US- in Canada, the suggestion that the Prime Minister (or others under him) might have committed Obstruction of Justice comes out, and in a matter of weeks the Liberal Party plummets in the polls, the leader of the opposition has demanded the PM's resignation, and Trudeau may be forced out of office.

In the US, which have ample evidence of multiple felonies include Obstruction of Justice by President Trump, yet to my knowledge not one member of the Democratic leadership will dare call for his resignation, and its taken two years to weaken him to the point where impeachment might happen.

Must the Left forever lack a spine?

Edits: Obviously, they're very different situations in very different systems. But as a dual citizen who has spent the last two years being deeply grateful that at least I have Trudeau as my PM as well as Trump as my Not A Real President, it will be a damn bitter pill to swallow to see Trudeau forced out for about one percent of the shit Trump has done with seeming impunity.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zxT8CM8XntA

Quite. And, more to the point, pragmatism dictates that Trudeau step down rather than dragging the whole party down with the sinking ship.

IIRC, a recent poll showed that if the election were held today, the Cons would win.

The polling tends to jump around depending on who is in the news cycle at that particular stretch. The Liberals falling down to the low 30s when their screw-ups are in the news, with Scheer getting up to 35-37%, but when people are actually paying attention to Scheer and not considering him as generic Conservative Party guy the Liberals bounce back up to majority territory. Scheer's been rather thoroughly stepping in lately as he's trying rather inartfully to follow Preston Manning's advice to channel rightwing populism productively as a "relief well" and guard is right flank from Bernier, who is making some inroads from the xenophobic right these days.

So a lot is in flux, but there's going to be fallout from this. Which kinda goes against the entire crux of MFG and CCP line about rule of law states. In Canadian poltical culture, interfering to benefit a large corporation is actually a scandal, not expected behaviour. The CCP line amounts to them want everyone to be as corrupt as they are and to use said corruption for Chinese benefit because that's what little states are supposed to do for big states in their view of the world.

Now, I know this is probably just opportunism from someone who wants to Make Canada Great Again. But I also can't help but compare to the US- in Canada, the suggestion that the Prime Minister (or others under him) might have committed Obstruction of Justice comes out, and in a matter of weeks the Liberal Party plummets in the polls, the leader of the opposition has demanded the PM's resignation, and Trudeau may be forced out of office.

In the US, which have ample evidence of multiple felonies include Obstruction of Justice by President Trump, yet to my knowledge not one member of the Democratic leadership will dare call for his resignation, and its taken two years to weaken him to the point where impeachment might happen.

Must the Left forever lack a spine?

Edits: Obviously, they're very different situations in very different systems. But as a dual citizen who has spent the last two years being deeply grateful that at least I have Trudeau as my PM as well as Trump as my Not A Real President, it will be a damn bitter pill to swallow to see Trudeau forced out for about one percent of the shit Trump has done with seeming impunity.

A big thing here is that in Canada at the end of the day the Prime Minister is just an MP who happens to be the elected leader of the party which can form government (aka can get a majority of votes in parliament when required). Unlike the president, all it takes is one non-confidence vote by the party and/or the House of commons and out they go.

Usually there will be a resignation before that point is reached, though there are exceptions (like Wynne in Ontario, who stayed on even when it was clear that she had become a massive liability). Those exceptions tend to come at a big cost come election time.

So a lot is in flux, but there's going to be fallout from this. Which kinda goes against the entire crux of MFG and CCP line about rule of law states. In Canadian poltical culture, interfering to benefit a large corporation is actually a scandal, not expected behaviour. The CCP line amounts to them want everyone to be as corrupt as they are and to use said corruption for Chinese benefit because that's what little states are supposed to do for big states in their view of the world.

1. That depends on what you mean by my line. Basically the PM and relevant ministers make a spiel about rule of law and evidence comes up showing the PM's office break said rule of law. Thus they are hypocrites. Whether every other Canadian politician behaves within the rule of law is irrelevant to my point.

2. Whether Chinese help their large corporations or whether Canada does not, is a reflection of different laws. Its irrelevant to my point Canada (under the current administration) is breaking their own laws. Its like accusing the Netherlands of expecting everyone else to decriminalise pot after pointing out someone who is tough on drugs also uses said drugs illegally.

3. Can you quote the CCP saying something that "they want everyone to be as corrupt as they are." Please quote that.

4. Do you seriously think, that states don't respond to external pressure, irregardless of whether the state applying the external pressure is larger or smaller. LOL.

I don't have your mind reading powers, so I can't comment on whether the CCP really thinks that how its "supposed" to be, but I would argue that is how the world works. Contrast to how its supposed to work or how it would work ideally. Denying that reality is like denying the need for a military because countries aren't "supposed" to attack each other under UN law.

Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

‘No decision is ever final’: Attorney General David Lametti as SNC-Lavalin affair continues

Attorney General David Lametti says decisions made by those in his role can always be changed.
In an interview with the West Block's Mercedes Stephenson, Lametti also suggested the description by his predecessor, Jody Wilson-Raybould, of attempted political interference to pressure her into helping SNC-Lavalin escape a criminal trial is not entirely accurate.
READ MORE: Jody Wilson-Raybould’s testimony — read the full transcript of her opening remarks
“Interference is perhaps the wrong word in that it implies something illegal is going on," he said.
Lametti, who became attorney general after Wilson-Raybould was removed from the post six weeks ago, acknowledged in the same interview he had not known when he took over the role and got briefed on the matters facing him that she had already made the decision not to offer a remediation agreement.
Such a deal would have allowed SNC-Lavalin to admit wrongdoing and pay a fine, but avoid the ban on bidding for government contracts that comes with a conviction for the corruption and fraud charges it currently faces.
When asked about the testimony from Wilson-Raybould last week, in which she described the Quebec election and the federal election being raised as issues she was pressured to consider when officials pushed her to change her mind, Lametti reiterated past remarks that the attorney general does not operate alone but needs to take other factors into account when making decisions.
As part of that, he said their decisions can always be changed if new information appears.
“You do have an ongoing obligation as attorney general in terms of your relationship to prosecutions and the prosecution service to be open to new facts," he said. “I can’t speak to the actual facts [of the SNC-Lavalin affair] but I know that in principle, an attorney general has to remain open so, in that sense, no decision is ever final.”
Wilson-Raybould outlined repeated instances in her testimony of what she described as attempts to interfere in her decision not to intervene in the case.
But she told members of the House of Commons justice committee that despite making her concerns clear, the pressure did not stop.
Instead, she said, it escalated.

She described one such case as happening on Oct. 26, 2018, after SNC-Lavalin had filed a judicial appeal of the decision not to offer it a deal.
Mathieu Bouchard, a senior adviser in the Prime Minister's Office, told Wilson-Raybould's chief of staff, Jessica Prince, that "if six months from the election, SNC announces that they’re moving their headquarters out of Canada, that is bad."
Wilson-Raybould said Bouchard continued, telling Prince, “We can have the best policy in the world but we need to get re-elected.”
On Dec. 18, Prince was summoned to a meeting with Gerald Butts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's then-principal adviser, and Katie Telford, his chief of staff.
Wilson-Raybould read out text exchanges she had with Prince following the meeting describing what happened in it.
"Gerry said, 'Jess, there is no solution here that does not involve some interference,'" Wilson-Raybould quoted Prince as telling her, and noted similar remarks were described by Prince as coming from Telford.
"We don’t want to debate legalities anymore," Wilson-Raybould said Telford told Prince.
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The next day, comments from Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick to Wilson-Raybould during their final meeting on the matter appeared to suggest the former attorney general's decision not to intervene didn't matter.
"I think he is going to find a way to get it done, one way or another," Wilson-Raybould quoted Wernick as telling her of Trudeau.
"He's in that kind of mood and I wanted you to be aware of it.”
Trudeau has told reporters the accusations of attempted political interference from Wilson-Raybould come down to a "disagreement in perspectives."
Butts and Wernick are among three witnesses set to testify before the justice committee on Wednesday.

While the new Attorney General is technically correct, given what is alleged so far it certainly seems as though he's helping to lay the groundwork for the Liberals to give SNC a deal. If that goes through IMO its going to cost a lot more votes than anything potentially gained.

So, they're going to go down with the sinking ship, leaving the way clear for the Cons to Make Canada Great Again. Lovely.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zxT8CM8XntA

OTTAWA – Jane Philpott has resigned from her role as Treasury Board President in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal cabinet, saying that she has lost confidence in the way the government is handling the ongoing SNC-Lavalin scandal.
Reacting to her departure, Trudeau said he knows Philpott had "felt this way for some time," and told supporters gathered at a climate change rally in Toronto that he is taking the ongoing affair that has dominated headlines for nearly a month "very seriously."
In a statement posted to her MP website, Philpott said that the recent events, including the SNC-Lavalin scandal, "have shaken the federal government in recent weeks and after serious reflection, I have concluded that I must resign as a member of cabinet."

Trudeau has been facing calls to resign after former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould testified at the House Justice Committee last week that she faced high-level "veiled threats" and "sustained" political interference to try to get her to instruct federal prosecutors to drop the criminal prosecution of the Quebec construction and engineering company that is facing bribery and corruption charges.
In her resignation letter Philpott cites the convention of cabinet solidarity—where ministers must always be prepared to defend other ministers publicly—in saying that it has become "untenable" to continue to serve in cabinet.
Trudeau vowed to continue the work Philpott was a part of. "In a democracy like ours and in a space where we value our diversity so strongly, we're allowed to have disagreements and debate," Trudeau said. "This matter has generated an important discussion: how democratic institutions, specifically the federal ministry and the staff and officials that support it, conduct themselves, is critical and core to all of our principles."
Trudeau said that while there are still more questions to be answered, there will be more to be said in the "coming days and weeks."
He implored the largely cheering crowd, peppered with a handful of hecklers, to be mindful of the "bigger picture" that his government was elected on.
Philpott said the evidence of alleged pressure offered by her friend and former fellow minister has "raised serious concerns" for her.

"The solemn principles at stake are the independence and integrity of our justice system…. Sadly, I have lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter and in how it has responded to the issues raised," Philpott said in her resignation letter to Trudeau.
In a statement Trudeau's office said that he spoke with Philpott about her decision to resign, and that he "accepted" it and thanked her for her service.
Public Services and Procurement and Accessibility Minister Carla Qualtrough is assuming Philpott's portfolio in an acting capacity. It's yet to be seen if this will prompt the third cabinet shuffle in as many months, or whether a sole person will be named to that role. Treasury Board President is a role typically held by a more senior minister.
Scheer calls other ministers to follow
In a press conference, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said that Philpott's resignation "clearly demonstrates a government in total chaos led by a disgraced prime minister."
He made a direct call to other Liberal cabinet ministers to think about following suit.
"Is this what you got into politics for?" Scheer said. "If not, it’s time for them to stand up and be heard, like Jane Philpott did today."
Scheer said that the remaining 33 cabinet ministers either need to force Trudeau to stand down or disassociate themselves from the scandal.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said in a tweet that Philpott's resignation "now more than ever" compels the need for a public inquiry. He said it raises "serious questions" about the alleged interference of Trudeau's government and its commitment to reconciliation.
The New Democrats are calling for Trudeau to testify under oath about the whole scandal.
"Jane Philpott has made her decision based on information she received from cabinet; Canadians deserve to know what happened as well," Singh said in the statement.
Philpott's record in cabinet
Philpott was first elected in 2015 to represent Markham-Stouffville in Ontario and has held three different ministerial portfolios.
She was first named as federal health minister and was central to installing a physician-assisted dying regime.
Then, Trudeau created the ministry of Indigenous services and tapped Philpott to head it. There, she was tasked with working to reset the nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous people, chipping away at boil water advisories in First Nations communities and drafting child welfare legislation.
Then in January, when longtime Liberal Scott Brison announced he was leaving cabinet in desire of a new challenge and more family time, she was shuffled in to fill his role at the Treasury Board.
Many considered her to be one of the highest-performing cabinet ministers.
In her statement Philpott says it has been an honour to "play a leading role" in several big government initiatives, from working to rebuild the nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous people, to legislating physician-assisted death. She said it "grieves" her to leave but she had to act on her principles.
On CTV's Power Play, Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary to Qualtrough, Steven MacKinnon, called Philpott a "highly-respected minister" but downplayed this high-profile departure as being symptomatic of a larger problem. He called it a "disagreement" over the "philosophy and the approach" to the SNC-Lavalin case.
NDP MP and Indigenous affairs critic Charlie Angus said that her resignation was a "watershed moment" in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, as well as a "sad day" for Canada as "nobody in government has done more to push reconciliation" than she had.

Staying on as MP
Like Wilson-Raybould, Philpott intends to continue to keep her role as a Liberal MP. She won her riding in 2015 with 49.2 per cent of the vote.
Trudeau has said he’s still reflecting on whether or not Wilson-Raybould will be welcome in the Liberal caucus based on her testimony, and it’s to be seen whether he’ll offer a similar remark about Philpott.
Prior to her career in politics, Philpott was a family doctor.
After Wilson-Raybould resigned, Philpott tweeted a photo of the two of them, saying that Wilson-Raybould taught her "so much," and that she knows she would "continue to serve Canadians."
On Monday Wilson-Raybould posted her own kind words about her friend and colleague, calling her "incomparable," and a "mother of country."
"For almost four years our country has witnessed your constant & unassailable commitment to always doing what is right & best for Cdns. You are a leader of vision & strength & I look forward to continuing to work alongside you," Wilson-Raybould tweeted.
Reacting to the sudden resignation, fellow Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes—who announced this weekend that she won’t be running again—tweeted: "When you add women, please do not expect the status quo. Expect us to make correct decisions, stand for what is right and exit when values are compromised."
A second Liberal MP, Wayne Long, has spoken out—not the first time for him on this case—to say Philpott’s resignation further bolsters the argument that an independent investigation is needed.
"I am deeply troubled by the fact that Ms. Philpott felt the need to resign as a result of our government’s handling of this matter," Long said in a statement. "I believe that we will not be able to successfully return our focus to this work until they have those answers."
Strategists, experts weigh in
Lori Williams, political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, said that Philpott’s departure is a "tremendous loss for the government."
In an interview on CTV News Channel Williams said that it is "very difficult to imagine what the government can now do to try to recover."
"Clearly, conversations have been happening for some time and the concerns that were raised were not being addressed to the satisfaction of former minister Philpott," she said.
On CTV's Power Play, Summa Strategies vice president and former Conservative staffer Kate Harrison said that ahead of the previous election, the Liberal Party recruited a number of established professionals who were not partisans, on the promise to do politics in a less partisan way. Harrison said that Philpott’s resignation is the result of not delivering on that promise.
"There is a real danger of other, new recruits being extremely dissatisfied and disaffected by the way this government has run. It is not government-by-cabinet as it was purported to be," Harrison said.
More to come.
With files from CTV News' Ben Cousins

A 'deferred prosecution agreement' would allow the firm to avoid criminal prosecution
A Liberal MP says his party believes the SNC-Lavalin is "entitled" to a deferred prosecution agreement — a legal mechanism that would allow the Quebec engineering firm to avoid criminal prosecution.
"Our belief is that this company is one that is, like its competitors around the world, entitled to a deferred prosecution agreement, like they would be able to have access to in the U.K.," Steven MacKinnon, parliamentary secretary to the minister of Public Services and Procurement, told CBC News's Power & Politics today.

"The government's adopted approach on this is one that has favoured jobs, it's one that has favoured pensioners, supply chains and a major Canadian company - all innocent victims of some corrupt management maybe a decade ago."

The Gatineau MP was speaking in the immediate aftermath of Jane Philpott's stunning resignation from cabinet earlier today. In a letter to the prime minister, the now former Treasury Board president said she's lost confidence in the way the Trudeau government has handled the growing SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Last week, former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould told a Commons justice committee she faced heavy political pressure and veiled threats from top Liberal officials who wanted her to allow SNC-Lavalin to avoid a trial on bribery charges.

SNC-Lavalin is facing corruption charges over contracts in Libya and was lobbying for a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) as an alternative to criminal prosecution. DPAs allow companies to avoid criminal prosecution by paying hefty fines and, in some cases, agreeing to outside monitoring.

During her testimony, Wilson-Raybould, who resigned from cabinet last month, recounted how Kathleen Roussel, the director of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC), let her know in early September 2018 that she was rejecting the company's request to negotiate a deferred prosecution.

MacKinnon pointed to legislation that allows the attorney general to overturn a decision made by the director of public prosecutions.

"We do have a disagreement here. We absolutely have a disagreement here and I think the current attorney general has said that, look you have to keep assessing the facts as these cases move along," he said. "But the fact is that we have 10,000 Canadians and their families and pensioners and suppliers and others who are not entitled to the same kind relief they would get if they were to work for an SNC-Lavalin competitor in the United States or in the United Kingdom ...

"The disagreement goes to how you see how Canada ought to approach major economic questions like the SNC-Lavalin issue. Do we do it like our OECD partners, do with these deferred prosecution arrangements, that have been widely discussed? Or do we do it with a ... perhaps more rigid approach?"
Deferred prosecution agreements ​became law in Canada in September of 2018.
The SNC-Lavalin criminal case is now at the preliminary hearing stage. The company has pleaded not guilty.

SNC-Lavalin allegedly does extensive bribing in Libya (and also fund Liberals beyond the legal limit too, but that's another story).

Prosecutors decide to lay charges.

SNC-Lavalin successfully lobbies government to change the criminal code so that they can potentially just pay a fine to avoid being convicted. Note that like Harper, Trudeau was content to bury this change in a budget bill.

Prosecutors decide that SNC-Lavalin should still be charged.

Attorney General decides that SNC-Lavalin should still be charged.

PM demotes Attorney General after she refuses to change her mind. This is allegedly after being pressured on all sides for some months. She eventually resigns from Cabinet altogether.

The new Attorney General and Liberals naturally claim that SNC-Lavalin is entitled to an agreement to avoid a criminal trial, and are simply amazed that anyone would disagree with them. They also claim that putting political pressure on the Attorney General to follow their whims is perfectly fine (so long as they are the ones doing it of course). No hint of any sort of apology or that perhaps any mistakes have been made.

This causes another minister to resign, which is probably because she was the only other one with some integrity and/or the political sense to know that this s&^tstorm is probably going to bury everyone involved.

Now even if we were to assume that the Liberals are correct and that prosecuting SNC-Lavalin isn't worth the cost (quite the assumption IMO) the way the Liberals have been going about it is the exact opposite of how it should be done. This is the exact kind of elitist arrogance that has killed plenty of parties come election time already and one would think they would know better.

And btw I'm not saying other parties would be any better (I imagine the Conservatives would be at least as bad if not worse), but this thread is about what the Liberals have done, not the other parties.

First, we have confirmation of what everyone suspected all along: SNC-Lavalin more or less threated to leave the country if they did not get their way. It shouldn't come with any surprise that once this got out they try their best to play victim:

SNC-Lavalin blasts leak of ‘Plan B’ that warned of U.S. move
Jordan Press and Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- SNC-Lavalin (SNC.TO 0.47%) warned federal prosecutors last fall about a possible plan to split the company in two, move its offices to the United States and eliminate its Canadian workforce if it didn't get a deal to avoid criminal prosecution, newly obtained documents show.
The documents, part of a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Canadian Press, describe something called "Plan B" -- what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can't convince the government to grant a remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.
Under that plan, SNC would move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,717, before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.
"The government of Canada needs to weigh the public interest impact of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin," the presentation reads.
"We must humbly ask whether the public interest is served to prosecute SNC-Lavalin, and to try to achieve a guilty verdict. Such a decision would effectively lead to the end of SNC-Lavalin as we know it today and has been for more than 100 years."

Of all the options for the future of the company, the plan in the presentation was the "most obvious" to follow and "well advanced" in terms of planning, say the documents, which the Privy Council Office confirmed receiving in late September, at the same time as prosecutors.

The company's board and senior management were prepared to quickly bundle parts of the business that had no role in the Libya case into a new entity, putting the "trio of possibly convicted entities" into another organization that would operate "on a reduced business level in Canada or heading into eventual wind-up," they read.
The details appear to contradict public statements by chief executive officer Neil Bruce, who has denied both that the company threatened to move its headquarters, and that the company cited its some 9,000 Canadian jobs as a reason the construction giant should be granted a remediation agreement.
The company walked back the comments days later in a statement, saying a remediation deal was the best path to protect its Canadian workforce.
In a March 20 interview with BNN Bloomberg, Bruce adamantly denied that he threatened to move the company’s headquarters from Montreal.
“I don’t know what people make up, or what they have in their minds,” Bruce said, when asked about media reports alleging SNC threatened to relocate.
“We’re proud of being a Canadian company. We have 130 offices across Canada,” he said. “This is where we want to be in terms of our base.”
Late Thursday, SNC-Lavalin spokesman Nicolas Ryan confirmed the authenticity of what he called a "confidential document" that was submitted to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to allow the director of public prosecutions to consider the company's request for an agreement.
“It is unfortunate and deeply concerning that a confidential and commercially sensitive document submitted to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC) for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has been leaked to the media, for reasons that remain unclear and are frankly baffling to us,” Ryan said in a statement.
“As part of the considerations evoked, and as SNC-Lavalin’s CEO Neil Bruce has articulated in media interviews, the company provided information on potential outcomes should it not have the opportunity to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA),” the statement continued. “We have been clear and transparent for several months that the company has a fiduciary duty to shareholders and employees, to have a Plan B in place should a DPA not be available.”
The presentation, which was delivered by mail to The Canadian Press anonymously and without a return address, also suggests the end of seven-figure donations and sponsorships for various community causes, hundreds of millions more in lost tax revenues, and the loss of spending on research positions at universities.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has held up the threat of job losses as the main reason he and others pressed former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to look into the prosecutor's decision.
Wilson-Raybould told the Commons justice committee last month she came under "consistent and sustained" pressure -- including veiled threats -- from Trudeau, his office, the Privy Council Office and Finance Minister Bill Morneau's office to halt the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
The ensuing political fallout has cost Trudeau two cabinet ministers -- Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board president Jane Philpott, who said she had lost confidence in the government's handling of the affair -- as well as one of his top aides, Gerald Butts, and Michael Wernick, clerk of the Privy Council, who will leave his post as the top federal civil servant before the fall election.
Bruce and Wernick met on Sept. 18 about the company's legal troubles.
Notes taken at the meeting, tabled as evidence with the House of Commons justice committee, show that Wernick told Bruce to take the public interest argument to the director of public prosecutions, adding the company "will want to get it right."
Wernick testified earlier this month that he spoke with Wilson-Raybould the next day where the former attorney general appeared "very firm in her mind" that the prosecutor's decision to not negotiate a deal with SNC-Lavalin was final. Wernick said Wilson-Raybould told him the only option for the company was to make public interest arguments through its lawyers.
A spokeswoman for the prosecution service said any discussions or documents in the case are confidential.

Now one would think that if there was any sort of integrity in politics the response to such a threat would have been "Go right ahead and leave then, and we'll make sure that everyone finds out about this too."

So, I think it should be pretty damn clear now that any interference by the government in the prosecution of this company was clearly politically motivated.

Oh and speaking of which, this pollical tsunami rolled out today and still more is to be expected soon

]PM wanted SNC-Lavalin deal 'one way or another,' top bureaucrat told Wilson-Raybould in secretly recorded call

The country's top bureaucrat warned Jody Wilson-Raybould that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was "quite determined" to prevent SNC-Lavalin's criminal trial from leading to job losses — and wanted to know why the then-justice minister hadn't used a new legal tool to allow the company to avoid a criminal trial.
A recording made by Wilson-Raybould of a 17-minute Dec. 19 call between herself and Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick was released today, along with 43 pages of emails, texts and a written statement from Wilson-Raybould herself which were tabled to the Commons justice committee.
Wernick — who was not aware he was being recorded — told the minister there was "rising anxiety" over the fate of a major employer.
"He's quite determined, quite firm," Wernick said of the prime minister's position on getting a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) for the Quebec-based engineering company. "And he wants to know why the DPA route, which Parliament provided for, isn't being used. And I think he's going to find a way to get it done, one way or another."

In her written statement, Wilson-Raybould explains why she recorded the call.
She said she normally has a staff member present to take careful notes, but on this occasion she was alone in her Vancouver condo.
"I was anxious to ensure that I had an exact record of what was discussed as I had reason to believe that it was likely to be an an inappropriate conversation," she wrote.
"So while I typed out notes during the phone call, I took the extraordinary and otherwise inappropriate step of making an audio recording of the conversation without so advising the Clerk. This is something that I have never done before this phone call and have not done since."
Why she resigned
In her statement, Wilson-Raybould also sheds new light on why she resigned from cabinet on Feb. 12.
Conservatives have suggested she was fired from the justice portfolio and moved to Veterans Affairs for refusing to budge on the SNC-Lavalin matter.
But Wilson-Raybould said that while she initially thought she'd been shunted to Veterans over the SNC-Lavalin affair, she ultimately decided that was not the reason.
"After much reflection, I decided to take the prime minister at his word, that this was not the case, and accepted a post I was honoured to have as the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence," she wrote.
Wilson-Raybould went on to say that a subsequent series of meetings with Trudeau in Vancouver, and a Feb. 11 news conference, led to her resignation:
"The prime minister stated publicly, when issues about the propriety of the government's conduct in relation to the SNC matter arose, that my ongoing presence in cabinet spoke for itself. I resigned the next day, and I trust my resignation also speaks for itself."
That news conference came just days after the explosive Feb. 7 Globe and Mail story which first reported the allegations of inappropriate political pressure on Wilson-Raybould to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin case.
When Trudeau was asked at that press conference about inappropriate pressure on Wilson-Raybould, he said she "confirmed" a conversation she had with him in the fall where he said any decision on the matter was hers alone. He said he was limited in terms of what more he could say because of cabinet confidentiality.
"In our system of government, of course, her presence in cabinet should actually speak for itself," he said at the time.
While Wilson-Raybould and former cabinet minister Jane Philpott have suggested there is much more to tell in the story, today Wilson-Raybould said she has now divulged all her relevant information.
"I do not believe I have anything further to offer a formal process regarding this specific matter, though of course if compelled or asked to participate in a judicial, investigative or parliamentary process I would do so," she said.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said this is more evidence the prime minister has lost the moral authority to govern and must resign.
"Justin Trudeau also told Canadians what he knew to be false," he said. "He knew that his attorney general had serious concerns about his plan to get SNC-Lavalin off of serious criminal charges. But he looked Canadians in the eye and told them that no one had raised concerns with him. This is false and he owes Canadians an explanation."

When Wernick testified before the committee for a second time on March 6, he said he did not have "independent recollection" of what he said during a Dec. 19 conversation with Wilson-Raybould.
'I did not wear a wire': Wernick
"I did not record the conversation. I did not wear a wire. I did not take notes and that is not my recollection of how the conversation flowed," he testified.

Wernick resigned as Privy Council clerk, the country's top civil servant, on Mar. 18, saying there was "no path" for him to have a "relationship of mutual trust and respect" with opposition party leaders.
Wernick's first appearance in front of the justice committee was widely criticized by Opposition MPs and pundits as partisan for the way he defended the behaviour of various government officials.
He is set to officially leave his post on April 19.
During the recorded call released today, Wilson-Raybould repeatedly stated that she thought the conversation with Wernick was inappropriate and that she wanted to protect the prime minister and the integrity of the government. In his testimony before the justice committee, Wernick said that Wilson-Raybould could have raised her concerns about inappropriate pressure, but did not.
In an interview with CBC Radio's The House to air Saturday, Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt said Wernick sounded uncomfortable, likely because he was doing something inappropriate in delivering the prime minister's message.
"He didn't give her comfort. He didn't say, 'That's okay Jody.' He landed it with, 'Well I guess we've got nothing else to talk about,'" she told host Chris Hall.
"So he is complicit in it. He threatened her job and he threatened her position. There's no question about it. And he did it on the behest of the prime minister. He may have sounded uncomfortable doing it, but he still did it."
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the fresh evidence is so compelling that a public inquiry must be called to get to the bottom of the affair.
"The PMO has tried to spin this as a miscommunication or personal disagreement. What we see in this submission is a lawyer acting in her client's best interests to protect him from his own recklessness," he said in a statement. "The former attorney general repeatedly made clear to the prime minister and those around him that their inappropriate actions would be seen as political interference, and they ignored her."

As attorney-general, Wilson-Raybould was acting as the government's lawyer and was bound by solicitor-client privilege. In Canada, it is not illegal for a person to record a conversation with another person without their knowledge — but it would be unusual for a solicitor to knowingly record conversations with a client without informing them first.
Many law societies, including the B.C. Law Society and the Law Society of Ontario, forbid lawyers from recording conversations with clients without their knowledge under code of conduct rules.
Wilson Raybould was called to the Ontario bar in June 2016 under a section of the Barristers Act which entitles a minister of justice and attorney general of Canada or solicitor general of Canada to be called to the bar.

Pressure, veiled threats
She testified on Feb. 27 that she faced intense, inappropriate pressure and veiled threats for refusing to overturn a decision by the director of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to deny the Quebec-based construction and engineering company a DPA, and instead proceed with criminal charges.
SNC-Lavalin faces bribery and fraud charges related to contracts in Libya, and could be barred from bidding on federal contracts for ten years if convicted.
Liberal MPs on the justice committee used their majority to close down the hearing without recalling Wilson-Raybould to testify a second time. That prompted the Conservatives to trigger a 31-hour voting marathon in the House of Commons last week in protest.
Liberals also used their majority on the Commons ethics committee to block an inquiry into the SNC-Lavalin affair.
The NDP is pushing for an independent public inquiry, while the Conservatives have requested an RCMP investigation and Trudeau's resignation.

IMO that's just more clear and convincing evidence that yes, the Attorney General was heavily pressured to intervene, that there were veiled threats as to what will happen if she doesn't, that the PM knew it would be seen as political interference to have the attorney general intervene and was warned such, and that the PM removed her as Attorney General when she did not intervene. Oh, and that the PM is still trying his best to cover up the whole thing rather than admit it and aplogise (or better yet resign), making it 10x worse.

Between this and other needlessly stupid gaffes like how Trudeau dealt with the Grassy Narrows protesters, it's no wonder why the Conservatives now have a double digit lead in polls, even with a tool like Sheer at the helm.

And again I'm not saying other parties would be any better (IMO the Conservatives would be at least as bad if not worse), but this thread is about what the Liberals have done, not the other parties. Or Trump.